The Overwhelming Recognition
by NinjaNovelist
Summary: Five times Sheldon has been overwhelmed by Amy, and one time he was by somebody else. Spoilers through the season 11 finale.


**Based on a certain line of Sheldon's wedding vows. Warning: one section of this is _slightly_ graphic, more so than I've ever been in my writing before, but more like a PG-13 graphic.**

 **But anyways, here's to completing a story for the first time in two and a half years!**

 _One_

As soon as his lips parted from hers, he couldn't take his eyes off her

.

On its face, it made no sense. Amy's appearance hadn't made any sudden changes in the eleven seconds they had kissed, but his body didn't seem to pay any mind. All at once it felt like his five senses came crashing down around him: the look of her stunned face, the taste of brownies on his lips, the feel of her hips in his hands, the clickety-clack of the train racing over the rails, the floor shifting beneath his feet like he was about to pass out. Maybe he still would.

And then there was a sixth sense, too. His emotions. He could _feel_ all those goofy hormones he hated flooding his brain like a dam breaking loose in a river. A dam he had so carefully constructed over time to temper his feelings for the woman before him. Even when she first drunkenly kissed him, even when he held her finger at Howard's rocket launch, even when they virtually consummated their relationship in Dungeons and Dragons, Sheldon had always managed to hold onto his wits by the skin of his teeth. But apparently all it took was one good kiss to get him swept away in the tide.

And as he opened the door and allow Amy to walk through, more so he could continue watching her than out of chivalrous obligation, he wondered why he had ever fought it in the first place.

 _Two_

"Sheldon? Are you even listening?"

With a jolt Sheldon returned his gaze to his laptop, where the unimpressed face of his girlfriend was clearly on display. Four weeks on the rails with only a call every other day to check in, and Amy thought she had the right to his undivided attention. Typical.

"Uh…" Sheldon quickly flipped through his eidetic memory to recall what she had been saying, but it was hard with the hustle and bustle of the train station diverting his focus. So much noise. He hated noise. "You were complaining about how your new intern got the brain scans done at the wrong frequency?"

Amy stared at him for a long moment, but then broke into a warm smile that made Sheldon's chest tighten for some reason. Some reason that made him wish he could reach through the computer screen for her. "Okay fine, I'm sorry I doubted you. Where are you right now?"

"Little Rock, Arkansas," he answered, after taking a moment to stare at a departing train to ease that strange aching inside.

"And, um… have you had time to think about things?" Amy asked slowly.

"I have yet to reach any definite conclusions, but yes, I've been spending much of my time doing what is colloquially and illogically known as 'soul-searching.'" The last word was punctuated with both air quotes and an eye roll.

Oddly enough, the phrase sent an amused smile tugging at Amy's lips. "Literally or metaphorically?"

Sheldon's brows furrowed. "What do you mean? There is no scientific proof for the existence of souls." Then he gasped. "Have you been talking to my mother? Has she converted you to her Jesus-crazed ways?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Amy assured him. "It was just something funny I read online. About how Harry Potter left his girlfriend to literally go soul-searching."

Sheldon stared at her, unsure if he had heard her right. "You know Harry Potter?"

"Yeah, I've uh… had a lot of extra time on my hands and I just finished the last one yesterday," Amy said, as true excitement steadily creeped into her voice. "They're really, really good. When you get back maybe we can have a marathon and watch the movies together."

 _I love you._

The thought was so stark, so visceral, there was no denying that was what had gone through his head. Suddenly the noisy station went completely quiet, despite the continued activity racing by in his peripheral vision. "I-" He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, the ache in his chest turning to heart-pounding… anxiety? Exhilaration? He wasn't sure. "My train just came in. I'll see you later."

"Oh, Oka-" But he shut the laptop before she could finish.

That was it. After all that deep thought and debate and theories through the weeks about what these new feelings could be, it turned out he had only needed one discussion on Harry Potter to come to a conclusion. The only conclusion.

And all Sheldon could do was sit there, on a park bench, waiting for a train that wouldn't arrive for an hour and a half, and revel in the eerie quietness of falling in love.

 _Three_

He couldn't breathe.

It must be the jacket, he figured. So he tried getting out of it, but his hands were shaking so bad it felt like the fabric had been welded to his skin, suffocating him. By the time he had wrestled himself out of it, he was so frustrated he threw it against the wall and collapsed into his bed.

It was the first time he could ever recall hating Spock. And Star Trek. And Leonard Nimoy. And his son. And his son's documentary. And Leonard. And Penny. It was not, however, the first time he hated having feelings.

But now that the cat was out of the bag (his breath snagged in his throat again at the thought of cats, and the time he had gotten a whole gaggle of them and the circumstances surrounding that), he allowed himself for the first time since… _it_ had happened to dwell on everything that went wrong.

Amy had left him. She'd told him she loved him, sixty-three times in fact, yet she left him anyway. Had she stopped loving him? Did she ever really love him in the first place? Love was supposed to last forever, he had thought. Would he one day stop loving her, too?

Strangely, it was the last question that caused the tears to fall. And it made no sense. He was angrier than he'd ever been in his life, so why was he crying?

As the tears began flowing freely, Sheldon thought of his parents. They would have screaming matches between bouts of days or weeks when they wouldn't even look at each other, so clearly they had stopped loving each other long ago. Yes, there was the day his father died, when as he was being wheeled into the ambulance he was gripping his mother's hand like a lifeline and staring into her face like he knew it was the last time he would see it. And there was the day of the funeral, when Sheldon had come back from the car to grab his forgotten hymn book and found his mother curled forward at his father's grave, weeping. But those moments that looked a lot like love couldn't ever coexist with all the selfishness and heartbreak of the past. Right?

As Sheldon heaved forward with sobs, gasping for air like a man drowning, he thought that maybe Amy did them both a favor by breaking up with him. Love always dies eventually, it was best that it happened quicker so the pain would be less. Though how a person could possibly be in more pain than this, a pain matched only by the death of a father he's tried so hard to hate but never could, he couldn't even imagine.

 _Four_

If someone had told him two weeks ago, after somehow finding the strength to deny Amy's proposal to get back together, that today he would be here, naked and in her bed, face buried in the crook of her neck while… something _else_ was buried in a different part of her body, Sheldon would have immediately referred that person to where his mother had had him tested thirty years ago.

Yet here they were, together again and more in love than ever, and Sheldon had promised both Amy and himself he would show that love in every way possible. Even this. If only he could find the mental clarity in himself to start moving.

When he had decided to do this, he had no idea it would be like this. He had thought it would be a gift to Amy, a magnanimous act of sacrifice for the woman he was going to spend his life with, only to find that it was a gift to himself just as much. He knew the science of sex and all the body parts affected by it, but he never expected such strong feelings to permeate every vein, every pore of his body, clouding even his most precious brain.

"Sheldon?"

It was so quiet he almost missed it, even when he was as close as a man could possibly be to a woman. Finding a force within himself he didn't know he had until he heard Amy needed him, he pushed himself onto shaky forearms to look into those beautiful green eyes.

"Do you need to stop?" she asked, even as her chest was heaving and her skin was flushed pink and her eyes were glassed over in desire.

"No, no, I want this. I do," he said quickly, breaking through the fog just enough to reassure her. "It's just- I just…"

He felt the words dry up in his throat as his mind fell into a haze once again, and all he could do was drop his forehead against hers and try to remember what breathing felt like. He had failed her. Again. All his show of intellectual bravado, and he couldn't even finish what every stupid creature in the animal kingdom was hard-wired to do.

But then he felt two gentle hands take either side of his face and lift him up so he was looking at her once again. She smiled at him with a tenderness that made his pounding heart ease itself instantly, then she moved her hands to his shoulders and carefully maneuvered them so she could be on top.

She didn't say a word as she began moving, and she didn't need to. As he raised a hand to grasp her already wildly tangled hair and finally found the clearness of mind to start moving with her, he realized that all he had needed was an anchor, something real to hold onto so he wouldn't lose himself along the way. And just then, in that moment, the only real thing in the world to him was Amy.

 _Five_

Sheldon stared up into the faux night sky as he rested his chin on Amy's head and swayed gently to the music with her. Even though they had eventually settled on the Athenaeum for the ceremony, he was glad they had compromised by using the planetarium for the reception. Especially with Luke Skywalker himself only feet away at the refreshment table.

He tilted his head down to take a subtle whiff of her hair, now without the veil but he still had to navigate around the tiara he had given her seven years before. Amazing how not that long ago he was refusing to have even a first dance with her, when this was now their… fifth? Sixth? He had lost count. The first had been a traditional waltz, and as others began to join it had picked up into a cha cha. Then he had shared a dance with his mother and Amy with her father, before all the Coopers (newest member included) lined up for the Texas hoedown that Georgie had insisted on. And then Missy had somehow talked him into put their cotillion training to good use, then the guys had wrangled Mark Hamill into spearheading an Imperial March, and then finally Sheldon snagged Amy back to lead her in a ridiculous tango that left her in tears laughing. As much as he had always loathed parties, even he had to admit he had never had more fun in his life.

But now the night was drawing to a close and the guests were thinning, and Sheldon and Amy were alone on the dance floor under the stars. And if that wasn't enough, they were doing the hippiest dance of them all: the slow dance. No form. Barely a rhythm. Only pressing against one another in a way that _certainly_ wouldn't leave room for Jesus as they teeter-tottered along to some sultry tune from the forties.

And Sheldon didn't care one bit.

Looking down at his bride as she snuggled into his chest, just as they had the night they first admitted their love for each other, for the second time in one day Sheldon found himself speechless. How could he possibly tell her everything he felt right now? Happy, joyous, blissful, cherished, grateful… none of those words were good enough. And she deserved words that were.

But as Amy turned her head up to meet his eyes, literally glowing against the light of the twinkling stars, he remembered one fateful night when he had unknowingly found not the words to what she meant to him, but the music.

"Amy," he breathed, touching his temple with hers in a physical meeting of the minds and knowing that everything he didn't have the words for she would understand anyway. "My darlin'."

 _Six_

The sun was just beginning to dawn over the Pasadena horizon, bathing the darkened sky in pinks and purples and yellows that placed the world in that one-of-a-kind blend of day and night. A peace had settled over the room that certainly hadn't been present an hour ago, and Sheldon turned from the window he was standing by to smile at Amy, who was taking a well-earned nap in her bed, before returning his gaze to the tiny bundle in his arms.

The baby- a little girl, their _daughter_ \- squirmed in his hold before cracking open her eyes to frown up at him, looking like she was already trying to puzzle out the world around her. God, he loved her so much.

She was small, just under six pounds and eighteen and a half inches, with big eyes and a slightly pointed nose (clearly inherited from her mother, and he was nothing but thrilled), and no hair except for one dark, giant tuft that reached the middle of her forehead. Absolutely perfect, though he knew that if she had come out green with six arms and spouting fun facts on geology he would've thought the same.

Sheldon was amazed by how a human being he knew almost nothing about, not personality, interests, or intelligence, who only entered the world forty-six minutes before and nine months ago didn't even exist, could make him feel like this. There had been so many ways he had been overwhelmed by Amy in the past, by the depth of his love for her and hers for him, but this baby girl brought all those ways upon him at once. He couldn't keep his eyes off her, the world grew quiet around him, he couldn't breathe, he could hardly think, and he had no words to describe any of it. He even felt a hint of tears burn behind his eyelids. Huh. Happy tears. He didn't know that was possible.

"Hey."

Sheldon turned instantly at her voice, his amazing wife as she shifted up into a sitting position.

"Hey," he answered softly, drawing closer with their baby. "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap," she said, but she was smiling.

Reaching her bed, he sat down beside her and kissed her cheek before turning back to his little girl. "Say hi to Mommy."

The child, of course, did no such thing, but it seemed that fatherhood would make him say some pretty illogical things for a while. Amy brought a hand to the baby's head and cooed gently at her. "Hi, cutie," she said, smiling more brightly than the rising sun outside. "Hi, Jane."

Jane. After Jane Eyre for Amy, Mary Jane Watson for him, and Jane Goodall for them both. The perfect blend of the two of them.

Carefully Sheldon brought Jane to sit propped up between them, Amy supporting her head while he held her back, and they both sat and watched as she slowly began drifting back to sleep. After a long time of awed silence, Sheldon brought his hand around to thumb her cheek, causing her to open her eyes again in a last futile attempt to stay awake, before he ran it down to take her tiny hand.

"Jane Constance Fowler-Cooper," he began, but then stopped as he felt those paradoxical happy tears make a return. There was so much he wanted to say, but once again he couldn't come up with a thing. Then for some reason, out of nowhere, one random, single thought pierced its way to the forefront.

"I'll have so many contracts for you to sign."

Amy threw her head back and laughed, and he grinned back in response. Yes, these two little ladies overwhelmed him, and they likely would many more times in the future. But if that was the price he had to pay to have them, constantly surprising him and making his life all the better for it, he would welcome it all with open arms.


End file.
